Flowers in the Impala
by Evandar
Summary: ONESHOT. Kate wants them to be a family - really, she does - but there's something wrong with John's boys. Dean/Sam Weecest; AU - Azazel Dies Earlier; Kate Milligan POV


**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Supernatural_ and am making no profit from this story.

**AN:** I don't usually write for this fandom at all even though I love the show, but this idea got stuck in my head and wouldn't leave until I wrote it, so here we go. I hope you like it!

* * *

Flowers in the Impala

by Evandar

John's boys are a cold-looking pair. They pull up in a separate car – a sleek, black muscle car that looks like it guzzles through fuel – and its doors creak as they exit. They're dressed the same, in flannel and jeans and in tense, hard-jawed looks. Kate does her best to smile at them, but the younger – Sam, a gangly kid with long limbs and floppy hair – just looks through her.

His brother, Dean, does the same.

She's pulled out all the stops for dinner. There's a pot roast and plenty of vegetables – John told her Sam liked them, and she sees that he does when he tucks in eagerly – and a homemade apple pie – Dean's favourite. Neither of them look like they eat enough, and both of them eat like they're starving. Neatly, but in quick, protective bites like they think she might steal it away from them.

"That was good, Ms Milligan," Dean says when he's finished. It's the first time she's heard him speak, and he sounds like John, just lighter and less like whiskey.

"Call me Kate," she tells him. Tells them both. "We're a family now."

She doesn't miss the look that says they don't believe her; she hasn't missed the way they've ignored Adam either.

…

She finds herself apologising later for only having one bed in the spare room. "You'll have to share until we can get some twins," she says.

"'S'alright," Dean drawls. "Me and Sammy are used to sharin', livin' on the road and all." He drapes an arm around Sam's shoulders, and his brother tucks calmly into his side, smiling a little smile that unnerves her for reasons that she can't quite place.

"Looks good, uh, Kate," Sam agrees, still smiling.

She wonders at how close they are. Adam's only six years younger than Sam, and he's already at the stage where he'll shrug off prolonged contact and say it's not for boys – talk he picked up on the playground - but his brothers don't even seem to notice how close they're standing.

"Right," she says. "Uh, there's a bathroom down the hall, and, well, you know where the kitchen and everything is if you need anything to eat or drink. Your father and I sleep on the other side of the house, and Adam's next to us."

"That's great," Dean says. "Thanks."

She leaves them to it. Watches as they each bring in two duffel bags each, and depressingly little else. She doesn't know much. Just that John spent years travelling for work after his wife died, and that he raised his boys on the road. She knows that he wants to settle down now, that he's finished with whatever kept him moving, and that she and Adam are a part of that.

But his boys. Oh God, his boys. His strange boys with their unnerving smiles and their hostile looks. They act like they've never been in a house before.

She shudders to think that that might be true.

…

They settle. Dean enrols Sam in the local high school before either she or John can get to it, and puts himself into the local community college while he's at it. She doesn't know whether to be worried by it, and John growls and grumbles about wanting to check the places out first, but the look Dean gives him is heart breaking in its blank acceptance.

"I checked them both, sir," he says. "They're on the level."

"You don't think you should have run it past me and Kate first?" John asks, and when Dean and Sam both look at her, she wishes he'd left her out of it.

"Dean always enrols us, sir," Sam says. And that, as far as they're concerned, is that.

There aren't really any further arguments. Not about that, anyway. There are tense moments. The boys will do something or say something and it'll all come down to John staring at them in disappointment and snarling orders, while his boys stare back. _Mutinous_, she thinks, whenever she catches glimpses of their clenched jaws and cold eyes, but the truth is worse than that.

She lies next to John in the dark and stares at the ceiling, and realises that when they met – when Adam was conceived – his boys hadn't been in Windom. They hadn't been anywhere _near_. He'd…left them somewhere, and it might not have been the first time, and Sam and Dean grew up wrong because of it. Co-dependent. Half-feral. They're good actors – good liars – but when it comes down to it, there's just something wrong with them and everyone around them can see it. It's something that keeps them on the edge; keeps them solitary. She thinks they like it that way, even though looking at them breaks her heart.

She can't help but be glad that John spared Adam whatever life his brothers have led so far. She hopes that there's a way to fix them somehow.

…

She arrives back from work to find Dean, Sam and Adam in the kitchen. Her son slips off his stool and runs to her immediately, crying out "Mom!" like he always does and giving her a hug. The other two don't even turn. Dean is at the stove, stirring a pot and humming something that sounds like Metallica; his brother has a book and a stack of notes in front of him. There's a heart doodled in the margin, but when she shifts to peer closer, he flips the page.

"What're you reading, Sam?" she asks.

"Homework," he replies, but closes the book around his finger so that she can see the cover. _Flowers in the Attic_. She's never read it, but the silhouette of a Gothic mansion on the front makes it look like some kind of modern fairy story. "It's not bad," he continues, and Dean turns to shoot a smile at him over his shoulder.

"Dork," he says, but Kate can see something else in his eyes and the curve of his full mouth. Something that makes her heart stutter and her grip tighten on Adam until he squirms. Then Dean turns away again, goes back to his stirring, and the pressure in her chest leaves again.

She was wrong. She was imagining things. It comes with being over-tired, and she sure as hell is. "Thank you for cooking, Dean," she says.

He merely grunts and nods. Sam's the only one that he really talks to.

Kate refuses to read anything into that.

…

Summer hits. Long and apparently unending days of sticky weather. Empty blue skies stretching on for miles as John takes them camping in the woods. He teaches Adam to use a gun, taking time to coach him into hitting targets. Kate doesn't like it, but she doesn't argue. He's taught his other boys as well, by the looks of things; Sam, though, has a hard set to his jaw and seems determined to ignore Adam even more than usual.

Instead of shooting, he and Dean spend their time by the creek. They strip off to their shorts and splash around in the cold water, showing muscles that teenage boys shouldn't have and a wide variety of scars that stand out pale against their deepening tans.

Freckles blossom over Dean's nose and his hair lightens to almost white blond, his eyebrows nearly disappearing. He makes them skewers of mystery meat that later turns out to be rabbit, roasts them over the fire. Sam finds them edible plants. They clean up together, washing blood from the blade of a hunting knife in the creek where they swim.

They're a shadow over the holiday. When they're away from the camp John set up, she can almost imagine that things are good. That everything is alright and that Adam's going to grow up just fine. When they're back, she can't seem to take her eyes off them; determined as she is to pick apart every seam of their existence and discover how John could possibly have raised children like them.

She's not certain what makes her lower her book. John and Adam are still at their makeshift range, John's pistol still gripped in Adam's hands. Sam and Dean are gone, again, but there's no splashing from the creek or sounds of voices. She props herself up on her elbows and looks around, finding nothing more unusual than the absence of their voices.

"I'm going to get a drink," she calls to John. "Want anything?"

He waves her off. Adam shoots her a smile, blindingly brilliant, and she smiles back as best she can as she stands and brushes herself off before heading down to the creek.

They're there. She catches a glimpse of them through the trees. Dean is sprawled on the bank with his eyes closed and his head tilted back. There's a couple of crumpled cans of soda next to his hand, which is clenched tightly in a blanket stolen from the back of the car. His other hand is fisted in his brother's hair. Sam's head is bobbing between his legs.

For a moment, she can't do anything. She's stuck in place, staring, unable to even breathe. Over the sound of trickling water and chirping birds, she can hear the wet noise of Sammy's mouth sucking at his brother's cock. She can see it moving, thick and red, between his stretched lips; see the shadows his eyelashes make on his cheeks. His eyes are closed. So are Dean's – neither of them see her, and she doesn't want them to either. There's a twisting feeling low in her belly, and for a moment she thinks it's nausea before she realises differently.

Grief.

She steps back. She doesn't take her eyes off them until they're hidden once more behind leaves, and she heads straight back up the slope towards the campsite, stopping to get a drink from John's truck.

She stares blankly at the Impala, parked carefully in the truck's shadow, and fingers the ring-pull on the can. _Does John know?_ is the first thought that crosses her mind. She pushes it aside immediately, refusing to even contemplate it. Of course he doesn't. John – she loves him, she thinks; she loves what he does for Adam and loves the company he provides – has his heart too far stuck in where he thinks the right place is to know what damage he's dealt out to his boys over the years.

Not for the first time, Adam's conception and the boys' obvious absence from Windom springs to mind, and she feels a surge of guilt. That, moments later, only makes her feel guiltier, because she knows that her first thought shouldn't have been about John. It should have been for the boys – for Sam, who's too young to be doing things like that; for Dean, who probably isn't forcing him, but who should know better than to do things like that with his baby brother.

She cracks open her soda and licks away the froth that spills over her fingers before taking a slow, steady sip. Now comes the debate of what to do with what she knows. She wishes the soda was something stronger.

She knows she should tell John – at least ask him if he knows. That she should have him there and they should confront the boys; try and get Sam away from Dean before it's too late, but she remembers hearts scrawled in the margins of Sam's school notes and thinks it might be too late for that.

She doesn't want to confront the boys alone. She's still scared of them, in a way. The way they've grown together, around each other, and the way they look at the world outside of them with cold, suspicious eyes. It frightens her. She thinks it always will.

A second sip, and she realises that she's already made up her mind to leave them alone. It's not her business – she's not their mother, and as long as Adam stays safe…

They're John's boys. They owe her nothing.

…

She can't stop herself from watching them. Can't stop herself from noting all the little things she did before – the way Dean only really talks to Sam; the way Sam curls automatically into Dean's side whenever he slings his arm over his shoulder – and reading more into them. She catches Dean playing with the ends of Sam's hair once or twice, and she has to look away because it makes her think of the day by the creek and the way Dean's hand was twisted in it.

She finds herself pausing outside of their bedroom door. It's heading rapidly into fall and they never did get round to replacing the bed; the boys never complained and it slipped her mind – John's too. She pauses and listens, standing on the landing with her heart in her throat and her ears pricked for any kind of noise. Sometimes she hears bedsprings squeaking and her head conjures matching images, but most of the time, she only hears her own heartbeat.

She thinks, sometimes, that she was imagining things that day. That they're just brothers after all and that she was suffering from a moment of madness. That the heat got to her. Made her see a mirage.

But then she sees the way they look at each other when they think no one else is around to see or that no one knows to look and she remembers that she wasn't dreaming after all. She remembers, in those moments, that she's not the only person who's going to notice and that something's going to give. She doesn't want to be there when it does; she knows she will be.

She looks to her son and her lover, and she knows that John's boys will choose each other over them.


End file.
